Pressure on ministers in view of June audit

Along with his optimistic announcement about the prospect of the country after the agreement with troika, the Greek PM is urging the ministers to implement the agreed measures so as to avoid the horror of the last one month and a half in the coming audit of June.

The layoffs of public employees are top of the agenda. Roughly 2,000 employees guilty of various offenses will be removed by June. These will be the first ones as others will follow until the end of the year. Trying to smooth the blackmail from troika, Samaras baptized layoffs as an improvement on the functioning of the government.

Manitakis always remains a problem for Maximos Mansion that might bring closer the reshuffle, which Samaras will combine with structural changes and improvement of the government mechanism that moves at a very slow pace.

The pressure exercised by Evangelos Venizelos is halting the reshuffle as information indicates that although the PM considers the other two leaders his prerogative must not be obscured.

The PM needs a political move to buy him some time until Autumn. He is staking a lot on tourism that he says will hit a new record this year with 17.5 million arrivals and corresponding increase of revenues. He hopes that in the next audit in June he will be successful towards a VAT reduction in catering so that tourists will leave more money in local communities.

He bases much on revenue performance so that at the end of the year Greece could have a primary surplus that will allow the government to ask for a debt reduction. Until then Samaras will seek a reduction in taxation, since it blocks the country's competitiveness against its neighbors and not only in tourism.